


Chicken Run

by newsbypostcard



Series: Comedy Oneshots [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Humor, M/M, angry chicken, farm problems, normal reactions to everyday situations with bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 18:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16560617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: To ask Bucky a month ago, he’d have said that free-range chicken farms were a thing of genius. Invisible fences, maybe vibranium in make, kept the birds from roaming too far. By and large, they created an idyllic farmland environment: birds pecking at feed along the ground and the gentle clucking ofnormalfowl were the kinds of sensory gifts that used to convince Bucky to get up in the morning.That was then. Things are different now. Bucky has come under avian judgment and been deemed unworthy. Horus has come to claim his bride. Bucky’d wronged this bird in a previous life and there is nothing he can do about it.





	Chicken Run

**Author's Note:**

> Lightly edited and expanded from its previous iteration on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/179765187066/chicken-run). The solution requires some suspension of disbelief, but bear with me for the sake of comedy.

  


Bucky really does have to solve this chicken thing.

He’s developing a new reputation for himself, which, predictably, sucks. Every reputation he’s ever earned has sucked. Casanova. Deviant. War hero. Assassin. Ruthless. Weak. Crazy. 

‘Chicken afraider’ somehow feels worse.

One of the nice things about Wakanda is that people are a little freer with their speech. No one gives a shit about offending him. It’s liberating. Bucky can take people’s actual thoughts and opinions; most of them are usually right. It’s the cover-ups, the kindnesses he doesn’t deserve, the benefits of the doubt he usually can’t stand.

But that was before this chicken—this long-legged screeching bitch of a dinosaur—took one look at Bucky and decided to make his life a living hell.

At first, Bucky’s cowardice was unobserved. Being terrorized by a chicken isn’t great for the ego, but it’s not something anyone necessarily needs to know about. He kills for a living, for crying out loud. He is a world-renowned assassin, but somehow all he can do in the face of this half-foot menace who distressingly vocalizes every time one of its too-long drumstick legs bounds toward him to extract its pound of flesh… is _run_. Beset upon by those black, merciless, beady little eyes, Bucky had felt every molecule in his body seize with the irrefutable knowledge that he was about to be torn limb from limb by the beak of Lucifer.

To ask Bucky a month ago, he’d have said that free-range chicken farms were a thing of genius. Invisible fences, maybe vibranium in make, kept the birds from roaming too far. By and large, they created an idyllic farmland environment: birds pecking at feed along the ground and the gentle clucking of _normal_ fowl were the kinds of sensory gifts that used to convince Bucky to get up in the morning.

That was then. Things are different now. Bucky has come under avian judgment and been deemed unworthy. Horus has come to claim his bride. Bucky’d wronged this bird in a previous life and there is nothing he can do about it.

Embarrassed of himself, Bucky had busied himself with other work until the devil herself had retreated back into the coop, then did what bird-related chores had been alotted to him as quickly as possible and vowed to settle things the next day. He might have turned into a coward under the force of a chicken’s scorn, but this problem is solveable. Bucky’s killed chickens before—not that it’s going to come to that. The point is that he’s hardly inexperienced in avian authority.

He’d been spooked, that’s all. He just needed to regroup, maybe get some sleep. Eat a bird in a stew. It’d all be fine.

That was three weeks ago. 

It's felt like a lifetime. Things have progressed, but… badly. The carers of the farm, for example, have long since taken notice. That was bad enough—but then the rumours started circulating through the village, chasing Bucky even when he wasn’t at the farm. And speaking with less regard for the sparing of a poor outsider’s pride, this particular Wakandan rumour has turned out to be less of a rumour and more of a reproduction of the truth, disseminated freely in front of him as he walks through the village.

This has yielded the snickering. Bucky has hated being feared, reviled being hated, and feared being reviled, but being laughed at for a problem he can't solve is its own form of personal hell. The ghosts of the past by and large pass him by, but the Winter Soldier is instead being haunted by a poultrygeist, the devil in a chicken suit, as though to make him fear for his safety and sanity in one fell swoop. 

Admittedly, even he thinks he’d find it funny if he wasn’t at such a loss for how to function normally without constantly checking his ankles for forthcoming impact.

In Bucky’s defense, it’s been a while since he’s been in regular contact with domestic fowl. But in all his years tending to neighbours’ chickens, commonly raised in the front yards of Brooklyn as they were, this never happened. It’s occurred to him that this is some kind of cosmic retribution, that the wrongs he’d committed against countless innocents had been transferred to the wrath of an ordinary bird. But it’s hard to process that, for all his misdeeds, his primary enemy in the modern world only stands halfway up his shin. 

Worse, no one else has been caught in the sights of this particular beast. Bucky has proven himself trustworthy to nearly every other animal on the farm; the other chickens seem to like him just fine. It’s just _this_ chicken, a lone offender, striking fear and loathing into his heart for reasons Bucky will never understand.

He’s become a man obsessed. No waking moment passes where Bucky doesn’t consider the chicken’s bargain. He can accept humiliation: allow himself to be hunted, continue to carry through his duties with an unhealthy reverence for the boundaries of the invisible chicken fence—sussed out by and large by a series of attempts at bribery with a series of grain- and grass-related tributes that resulted in Bucky running for the hills.

Or he can take the offensive. Addressing issues aggressively been more of a symptom of war and something he’s been happy to put behind him for the most part, but this situation has reached a point of no return. He can’t be sure of the ideal translation, but his new title of ‘Chicken Subordinate’ is a massive step down from White Wolf, and it isn’t doing much for the serenity and experiential integration he’s supposed to be cultivating in his day-to-day life.

So he’s thought up a few different ways to solve the problem. He can pray that the devil’s constable isn’t a particularly good egg-layer and offer to buy the little fucker from his employers—specifically that chicken, either for reasons undisclosed or for obvious ones—and taking care of the problem on his own terms. He’s thought about lying to try to make the bargain work, but ‘I’d like to keep my own chickens’ doesn’t seem very likely to fly when he’s been caught several times—to the point of drawing a crowd near to sunset when Bucky inevitably has to feed the fuckers again before heading home—sprinting as fast as his legs will take him away from Evil Foghorn Leghorn, who’s following at a pace more befitting of her cousin the raptor.

Or he could just kill the thing outright and try to lie his way through an explanation. There are times when the potential consequences of such a transgression don’t feel near so bad as the propsect of having his every move watched by an avian assassin, spiking his paranoia in ways completely beyond the pale. He once entertained the prospect that this chicken was somehow working for Hydra, which was enough to convince him that he needs to decide on some course of action soon before he changes into tac gear and tries hiding in the ramparts of the coop until he finds the asshole she’s reporting to.

But then Steve visits, and warm feelings temporarily eclipse the urgency of his chicken dilemma.

Of course, Steve has eyes. 

“Why are you skirting that tree like that?”

So bliss doesn’t exactly last. 

To his credit, Bucky falters for only a second. “No reason,” he says, adjusting his grip on the sack of grain over his shoulder, continuing along his usual path.

“Really? Because the grass is wearing all around here in the exact—”

“Steve…”

“—trajectory that you keep following every time you pass—”

“Leave it.”

“It’s weird, it’s like a semi-circle.” Steve glances toward the chicken coop, then behind him toward the village before facing Bucky again, hitching a thumb over his shoulder. “Hey—is this why that lady called you my ‘chicken underling’?”

Bucky frowns at him. “I don’t… know what you mean.”

“ _My_ chicken underling, which was… specific. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to know what that meant, but… I know you’re not afraid of chickens.”

“She didn’t call me that.”

“She did.”

“You don’t speak Xhosa.”

“I know. She said it in English.”

“She did not.”

The first hint of a smile flashes across Steve’s face, which doesn’t bode well. "Why would I make this up?”

Bucky frowns harder, cheeks growing warm. “Who told you?”

“Who told me what?”

“About my…” Bucky grits his teeth. “ _Problem._ ”

“What problem?”

“My… chicken… problem.”

“Your chicken problem.”

“Nevermind.”

Steve catches his arm when he tries to walk away, but Bucky only scowls harder when he sees Steve fighting that smile again. “What chicken problem,” he says, infuriatingly patient.

“The—” Bucky gestures frantically to the side, but when Steve’s expression fades into seriousness, he lets himself settle into a calmer explanation. “The devil is in this chicken, Steve,” he whispers, glancing to the side. “It’s launched a sustained assault on me. I didn’t do anything to her, she can just smell blood. She’s completely fine with other people, but every time she sees me, her eyes flash red like she’s been possessed. It’s like some demon who wants me dead has taken over this fucking chicken and starts freewheeling all over the pen, determined to cause me pain. She chases me out of here twice a day, I can’t run fast enough.” His brow furrows. “Stop laughing!”

Steve’s only set a hand over his mouth, but Bucky knows that tightness around his eyes well enough. “Sorry.”

“You’re not.”

“I want to help. Keep going.”

“I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m at my wit’s end. I’m a skilled tactician, but this is beyond my…” He points in Steve’s face. “You know I’ve dealt with my share of chickens. I used to butcher them regular for Old Lady Watson, remember?”

“I remember.”

“And this is not—Brooklyn, you know? These chickens have minds of their own. There’s no negotiating with them. I’ve tried bribery, I’ve tried everything short of ritual fucking sacrifice—”

“I mean, there’s your answer.”

“But there is no curing the road rage this animal gets, like I’ve cut her off on the 87 every day for the last eighty years.”

“Have you tried getting to know her?”

“Have I tried—” Bucky blinks at him. “I don’t think you’re understanding the scope of the issue here. Her version of getting to know me involves tearing my throat out. I would be a bleeding stump of a man before she was satisfied with her henpecked interrogations.”

But Steve shakes his head and sets off toward the coop without so much as a backward glance. Bucky hisses at him to get back behind the line of scrimmage, but when Steve ignores him, he just watches with catlike attention, waiting for the chicken to throw herself at him like a moth to the flame. The longer Bucky waits, the longer he becomes convinced she’s lying in wait, gathering the troops to reject them both for the hubris of their intrusion.

But nothing happens. Steve dips his hand into the feed and points with idle amusement toward the coop. “The devil’s in one of these birds here?”

“Just leave it alone if you’re not gonna believe me.”

“I believe you. Which one is it?” 

Bucky stares, but Steve stares back, looking as close to serious as he’s going to. Swearing to himself under his breath and certain that he’s about to step to his doom, Bucky sets across the pen after him, hurrying. His senses are cranked, his vision sharp enough to register any single movement coming his way—

—and as though responding to an early warning system, the god of poultry and vengeance herself speeds out of the coop and toward Bucky, legs cranking with half the mass and the dedicated velocity of that cartoon roadrunner.

“Steve,” Bucky says warningly, already halfway turned to sprint out of the pen again—but then Steve clicks his tongue and gets down on his haunches, holding the feed out in front of him.

By miracle, menace, or some other invervention, the bird lets her attention be drawn from Bucky and toward Steve just by the click of his tongue. She cocks her head at the feed in Steve’s hand while stalled between them, like she can’t decide between bloodlust and the regular kind of hunger.

“You gotta be kidding,” Bucky mutters under his breath, watching as she trots at a normal pace toward Steve’s outstretched hand. Upon investigating the food in his palm, she pecks at it carefully at first, and then more dedicatedly. From the lack of Steve’s screams, Bucky assumes she is managing this façade of normalcy without pulling any flesh off Steve’s hand.

“See?” Steve says, like Bucky hasn’t tried exactly this a thousand fucking times.

“She’s out for blood,” Bucky insists.

“Seems like she’s out for grain to me.”

“You don’t understand.” Bucky takes a hesitant step forward but, presented with food, the bird seems completely unconcerned about Bucky’s presence. “It’s an act. This bird is the antichrist. There’s no way this isn’t all part of her scheme.”

But there’s no change in her demeanor as Bucky gets closre. She doesn’t even seem to register anyone’s behind her; she doesn’t move at all as he steps behind Steve, determined to use him as a shield in case this is all part of some kind of honeypot scheme. Steve has two arms; he stands a much better chance against this bird than he does.

But the bird keeps eating with unflinching focus and gentility. She pecks out of Steve’s hand with deceptive innocence, wattle wobbling, giving Bucky a glimpse at the naive chicken she may once have been.

“I know you’re fucking with me,” Bucky whispers, staring at her over Steve’s stooped shoulders. “You’re not gonna lull me into a false sense of security. No matter how you are with Steve, or with anyone else—I’ve seen your true face. Your games mean nothing to me.”

The chicken offers no reply.

  


  


  


Bucky gets his comeuppance in some small way. When Steve steps back and beseeches Bucky to try the same, Bucky gloweringly does, staring at Steve the whole time with bitter reluctance, bending down to offer hell's chicken the feed as Steve had done. For a moment nothing transpires. Bucky stares at the chicken; the chicken stares at him. Then, with worrysome contemplation, the chicken bobs slowly forward, dips her head into Bucky's hand, and immediately does her damndest to peck right through to the bone.

"Ow," Bucky says, "ow!"—and in moments he's standing and running back outside the chicken perimeter, Steve right beside him, the chicken's legs wheeling after them both.

They stop and turn back to look at her scratch the ground with her chicken feet. Bucky holds his bleeding hand furiously up to Steve. "Tell me that's not bloodlust!" he yells at him.

"Okay," Steve says, though he's covering a smile again. "I didn't doubt you."

"Yes you did."

"I just don't understand what a chicken could have against you."

"Me neither!"

"She does this all the time?"

"Yes. Daily."

"You're wearing boots."

"She pecks at the material until she can get at my legs, she's got a beak like a pickaxe. She's a flesh miner by trade."

"Have you tried rubber boots?"

"No mobility."

Steve looks at him. Bucky gestures to where the hell chicken clucks menacingly. "Clearly," he says, "I have reasons to run!"

"Okay," Steve says, thinking. He looks at Bucky like he wants to suggest telling the farm's primary carers, but Bucky glares at him until the thought leaves his mouth. "I think a preventative solution is gonna be best here," Steve says instead.

"I am all ears, really."

"You're not gonna like it."

"I don't fucking like _this_!"

  


  


  


Steve's right; Bucky doesn't like it. But at this point, anything's worth a shot.

Another ten days or so of chicken run and Bucky's order comes in the mail: a pair of certified replica Captain America boots, complete with reinforced shin guards for reasons Bucky cannot fathom. Certified leather.

Bucky still can't work out if Steve is playing some kind of prank on him—but in the end it doesn't matter. On assessment, he decides they will probably work.

So to Bucky's satisfaction, he manages to solve his chicken problem in the stupidest, most passive way imaginable: by preventing a bird who cannot fly from attacking him by putting a literal barrier between her beak and his legs. It's far from foolproof; she still gets in a few pecks at his ankles from time to time. But a gentle pushing aside with his foot and her beak makes no further progress the next time she dives furiously at his legs.

Whatever her vendetta was, over time she forgets it—but every time Bucky tries to switch back to regular boots, she starts up again, like that was what had incited her ire in the first place.

So Bucky is stuck working the farm wearing Captain America boots into the winter.

The village being what it is, the exact origin of Bucky's boots is widely disseminated, obvious from the shield logo on the merch box delivered to his roundhouse. Which is fine. 'Captain Fanboy' is still a better nickname than 'chicken underling.' It might even be his favourite reputation so far. 

He can only pray it never gets back to Steve.

  


**Author's Note:**

> [The boots in question.](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/t/550c977ae4b0ca752619f249/1426888634074/)


End file.
